2011 Archive

Here are the dates of the meetings scheduled for 2011

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The January 2011 meeting was devoted to the pictures of one of our own members, Steve Haynes, showing us some of his own slides. Steve started off by showing us the very first railway picture he took which was of a class 31 diesel at Exeter St Davids. He went on to cover photos taken locally as well as on holidays, along the sea wall at Dawlish and Teignmouth and at other scenic spots.

He then showed a collection of pictures taken around Axminster illustrating the changes that have taken since it was the junction for Lyme Regis to right up to date with the doubling of the track to enable the station to become a passing place.

A new feature of the evening was a photographic competition for members with three classes, Steam, Diesel and general railway pictures

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Michael, Bob and Richard's visit to Southern Locomotives

Southern Locomotives shares a large workshop at Herston with the Swanage Railway. Currently Battle of Britain class 34053 Sir Keith Park is being restored, and Standard Tank 80104 was receiving a light overhaul.

Also in the workshop is unrebuilt Battle Of Britain 34072 257 Squadron. 

It bears a temporary wooden nameplate: "Goering: Battle of Britain (Runner Up) Class"

34072 ran in preservation for 12 years, and is next in line for a major overhaul.

Sir Keith Park's boiler has yet to be mounted on the frames. 

 A new cab has been fabricated and is being finished at present.

Sir Keith Park's boiler has needed a lot of expensive repairs. 

 Note the thermic syphons in the firebox.

The front tube plate also needed a lot of work to replace corroded metal.

The Superheater Elements waiting to be fitted to Sir Keith Park's boiler.

Standard Tank 80104 has been fitted with new tubes and superheater elements. 

 It was returned to service on 20th May.

Two class 33 Cromptons are in service on the Swanage Railway.

In February we welcomed Brian Jackson who came to a very well attended meeting to tell us about the History of the Railways of Yeovil. The first railway company to reach Yeovil was the London & South Western who built a terminus to the south of Hendford hill, this station had a fairly short life before the Town Station was built as well as Yeovil Junction and Pen Mill, this produced a very complicated track and operating area in quite a confined area. Brian brought a large number of slides with maps of different times and pictures covering most of the period bringing it up to date with the Yeovil Steam Centre.

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At our March meeting Alan Reeve came to talk to us about “Steam in the Sixties”. In the sixties Alan lived near the east coast main line so he started with slides of Eastern Region steam, from there he took us up the main line with pictures of various locations as he worked his way north and into Scotland where his family spent holidays at that time. We saw steam working in various locations both on main line and branch lines. From Scotland we were taken to the north west of England and then into Wales where there were visits to narrow gauge lines as well as main line shots. Alan finished his show by visiting the Southern Region before progressing to the south west.

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At our April meeting Tony Bagwell came to take us on a “Pilgrimage to the Prancing Horse”. The prancing horse of course refers to Ferrari cars which are made in Italy. To get there by public transport from this part of England you have get to London and then to Paris and on through Switzerland before you finally reach Italy. Our journey started from Taunton, by HST to Paddington, from there on the |Underground to St Pancras. We had a quick look around this terminus before leaving on the Euro star for Paris which is of course in the land of TGV’s from the Gare du Nord to the Gare du Est and from there to Switzerland where there are a lot of interesting railways.

Tony took us on several of the Swiss systems both standard gauge as well as narrow and rack systems before going on into Italy. There we looked at various trains on the Italian system before going on to get a brief look at the Ferrari Factory in the town of Maranello where several of the Red cars were seen out on test and one heavily disguised car under development.

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The subject of our May meeting was “Railways in Transition” when our speaker, Mike Beale, covered the period of the late fifties to the early seventies. Mike has lived in the Bath and |Bristol areas for most of his life so we were looking at the Somerset & Dorset, the Western and Midland regions. The time Mike was looking at of course was when thousands of steam engines were sent for scrap to be replaced by Diesel Locomotives which were on the Western Diesel Hydraulic and on the Midland Diesel Electric. During this time the majority of steam loco’s were in a very run down and dirty condition and this was reflected in the slides we saw. Reliability with the diesels in the early days was not very good and so some unusual combinations of loco’s occurred just to keep the trains running.

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The subject of our June meeting was “Welsh Highland Railway, Porthmadog at Last” when our speaker David Whitcombe concluded the series of talks over the last few years about the rebuilding of the Welsh Highland Railway. David brought with him a considerable number of slides, in the first half of the meeting recapping of the work involved in getting the track and infrastructure ready for trains to run. This work was carried out in stages from Caernarvon through to Beddgelert. After the refreshment break he covered the journey from Beddgelert through to the Ffestiniog station in Porthmadog, which involved problems not encountered on the earlier work. The first of these challenges was a crossing of Network Rail tracks on the level followed by several road crossings in Porthmadog before reaching a crossing of the Britannia Bridge and reaching the station. All the tracks in the town had to be laid in tramway style.

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